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Travel Notes |
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Wed Jun 26 04:49:43 2002 (nmcfarl) Book: Micronesia Moon Guide Location: Rock Our day trip through the Rock Islands included about half a day of kayaking around inlets and islands. Great as usual. We snorkelled in an area called Einstein's Lake or perhaps Einstein's Garden (can't remember), filled with brain corals. Saw a large sea anenome and its symbiotic pal the clownfish. The anenome has poison on its tentacles(?) but the clownfish secretes a mucus that protects it. The clownfish helps drive away predators and also helps feed the anenome. I saw one large clownfish and one tiny one. Practiced diving down into the water in order to get better views of coral. The next snorkelling spot was along a drop off with Giant Clams (bivalvia tridacnidae). They are huge! Huge means three to six feet long and a couple feet tall. They often weigh half a ton. They are somewhat endangered because of the their popularity as food, especially in Taiwan. Poachers will remove only the abductor muscle and leave the rest of the clam behind. THe clams are colorful -- purple with green pattern, black and white swirl pattern, ruddy orange, etc. In the shallower areas, there was what Paul Theroux calls "the boneyard" -- coral that looks like scattered bones. I'm unsure whether it is alive or dead, and I forgot to ask our guide, Shaft, this question. Swimming over the boneyard were three long narrow and skinny reef needlefish. Silvery, almost see through. In deeper water, I saw this weird caterpillar-like, tube-like animal with black "feet" at one end. I had seen this same creature the day before at the aquarium. What was it? A sea cucumber, it turns out. They come in many shapes and sizes. Also saw a number of the beautiful Moorish Idol fish. We climbed back into the boat and sped off for the island containing Jellyfish Lake. The Rock Islands formed when coral was uplifted from the ocean, then eroded by rain (now porous limestone), then into islands when the ocean levels rose. Occasionally lakes were formed instead of islands, and after a long long time, this one lake developed some interesting jellyfish, which lost their ability to sting (mostly) from a lack of predators. Now the jellyfish swim in a huge mass, from one side of the lake to the other depending on the time of day. People don lifejackets, masks and snorkels, and swim among them. Wow...the though originally weirded me out a bit, swimming with so many jellyfish. But it was extremely cool, though I wish I had cut my fingernails before hand. (Occasionally, while swimming, my fingernail would go into a jellyfish. I hope they didn't get seriously hurt by this.) There were thousands of jellyfish, ranging from pinky-nail-sized to football-sized. I could see them below and all around me, and on one occasion when I swam down into the water, all around me. They would brush past you as they pulsated this way and that. I watched the jellyfish bump into each other, and like pool balls, they reflected off each other and pulsated in new directions. One little jellyfish got temporarily caught inside a large jellyfishs "dome" (the part that pulsates). It couldn't get out until the large jellyfish rotated around and gravity let the little one fall out. Way way way cool. Nothing like it that I've ever seen before. PBS link about Palau PBS page about Jellyfish Lake Google search for images about jellyfish lake Wed Jun 26 04:22:23 2002 (nmcfarl) Book: Micronesia Moon Guide Location: Koror Monday afternoon we drove our rented Mazda SUV through the pouring rain to Sam's Dive Tours to discuss our upcoming camping expedition. We had spent the day driving around Babeldaob, the large island connected to Koror Island by a very nice bridge (as a sign of friendship between Japan and Palau, both of which have similar flags. Click on their names to see the flags.) According to our guidebooks (both Moon Guide and Lonely Planet), the compact between the US and Palau included building a nice paved road around Babeldaob, scheduled to be completed in 2001 or so. Our map of Palau indicated in purple the Compact Road, and in black existing road. I took the purple with a thin black line to indicate existing Compact road. This turned out to be a false assumption. We took a left at the road past the Shell Station, which was dirt. Along our drive we saw signs of working on the new road. The new road will be quite wide, and in many parts straightened of those unsightly curves one must brake around. Obviously they didn't hire New Zealanders to design the new road. Check out the link (its in the last paragraph) to see my opinion on why. The road was still completely made out of dirt though. We had a 4-wheel drive but didn't end up needing it. We didn't make it too far into the interior of Babeldaob, about 13 km or so. Or maybe miles, I don't remember if the map was in miles. It probably was. I was driving a Japanese car, with the steering wheel on the right, and the speed in kilometers per hour, and of course, watching the odometer in kilometers. It took me about five minutes to realize that I wasn't constantly speeding (25 mph is the limit everywhere in Palau) since I was going 40 km/hr not 40 mph. so we drove around green hilly Babeldaob, an island volcanic in origin. We saw cuts in the road occasionally of dark almost shiny igneous rock. Occasionally we saw great views of bays and far off hills. Sometimes there were meadows with desert-style plants (yucca-like leaves, think pineapple plants). We got lost, found our way again, and finally realized it would take all day to drive to the northern end of the island, which has the basalt monoliths and great beaches. Wed Jun 26 04:10:31 2002 (nmcfarl) Book: Micronesia Moon Guide Location: Koror (continued from above) Unfortunately we didn't have the seven or eight hours to do this, nor did we have provisions beyond two small cans of Spicy Hot V-8. So we turned around, attempted to find the Ngaraard Waterfall. (Directions: take the sharp left at where the power lines cross the road at about 13.1 miles (or km?) Park your car near the summer house and walk on the trail behind the house.) We gave up and drove back to Koror, bumping up and down on the road in our huge vehicle. I drove. I rarely see other women drive here, at least not if a man is also in the car. The women driving are always alone. So we ate lunch here at the Cafe@Palau and as we got up to leave discovered the rain was dumping out of the sky. We got soaked running to the car. Eventually we decided to drive to the Aquarium. The aquarium is an outdoor exhibit, as it turns out. Fortunately they supply umbrellas. The exhibits include aquariums with mangrove habitat, coral bay and coral reef. The sheer number of fish was amazing. We also saw huge nautilus. And in the outdoor pool, I could make out a shark (the rain on the water surface made it impossible to see anything but dark shapes swimming in the water). The shark has a distinctive shape. So! Eventually we drove to Sam's to set up our latest camping expedition. Us, the kayaks, the Rock Islands, for four days and three nights. However, the combo of the full moon and the weather did not look good. I expressed an interest in seeing Jellyfish Lake, which made Ron's day, since another couple who were to go camping but saw their plans fall apart with the rain were to go on a kayaking/sightseeing tour the next day that is to include Jellyfish Lake. A perfect fit. Wed Jun 26 04:01:59 2002 (nmcfarl) Book: LP Micronesia Note: I am in Cafe@Palau, my friendly local internet cafe. They give you half off internet time if you eat a dessert or meal. Considering our time on the computer today, we had better order that taco salad or sundae. Cost for internet here is $6 US an hour. Currency from here on out is all in US dollars, by the way. So we don't care if the US dollar weakest this point. Ja Rule can be heard singing in the other room (over the radio of course). Since I've written this, mellow sounding Palauan music has starting playing. TV here is American, lots of Bay Area local news channels, so we know the weather for Oakland, CA every day. US Channels don't bother playing World Cup games. Wed Jun 26 02:57:18 2002 (nmcfarl) Book: Micronesia Moon Guide Location: Palau So yesterday we went on a day kayak trip, which was absolutely amazing. We'd kinda wanted to do another camping trip, maybe even something longer, but the weather is not cooperating, it's raining every day and the winds are pretty vicious so we decided to do a day trip, whihc would let us do some kayaking in more sheltered conditions and we'd also have access to a boat for snorkelling at further out locations ( as well being transported to the sheltered bits o' kayaking. As it turned out by luck and planning we missed most of the rain. We kayaked in the morning amongst the amazingly cool rock island, in light cloud cover and occasional sun, and went snorkelling at a particularly cool brain coral site and a downed WWII Japanese Zero that was in very good shape. We also kayaked about another of the really cool seawater lakes connected to a bay by only a tunnel. Very nice. We lunched at a state park reachable only by sea, and maintained by the Department of Conservation and Law Enforcement. A Nice spot and right accross from our next snorkel -- a drop off littered with giant, 3-6 foot across, clams with cool irridescent flesh and tons o fish. We finished up the day with a trip to Jellyfish Lake, another seawater lake but this one is totally disconnected from the ocean. It has huge amounts of jellyfish, and they have after a long separation from the sea lost their ability to sting, they now 'farm' algae instead of hunting. Basically you float amongst thousands of jelly fish, in spots they get very very dense and surround you. It is intensely weird. It's also intensely cool. It lookis vaguely like a Star Wars seen with flying cars going every which way, but really it looks weird and cool and amazing. Otherworldly. |
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